ABSTRACT
The Piano in a Factory was produced with little expectation of mainstream release across Mainland China but was a welcome outcome when the permission was granted. The film's presence on the international film circuit prior to being released within China, and the premise of the narrative being the sensitive topic of poverty and class disadvantage of China's "retrenched workers"– not usually the fodder of commercial big screen narratives – supports this thinking. This chapter explores a number of ways in which The Piano in a Factory manifests notions of suzhi both in its narrative and among its audiences in their spectatorship. The Piano in a Factory links the cultivation of suzhi to middle class aspirations in the narrative through Chen Guilin's inability to afford his daughter's piano tuition. Audiences of The Piano in a Factory confirmed that the cultural codes of suzhi are indeed exclusive, and suzhi's exclusivity is why the futures of Chinese children can only ever be unequal.
